The humble sheet pan is the hero of weeknight cooking. Its sleek, spacious surface allows the busy home cook to get a balanced dinner — protein! starch! vegetables! — on the table, fast, with very little prep or cleanup. Just chop, drop and roast.
That’s why, every week, we’ll be sharing the go-to, throw-it-all-on-a-sheet-pan recipes from our favorite chefs and home cooks. Whether you’re cooking for yourself, friends, family or meal-prepping for the week, you should keep these one-pan meals in your back pocket — or, rather, your oven.
This week, cookbook author Ali Rosen, host of "Potluck with Ali," shares her recipe for sheet pan miso-lemon salmon with zucchini and rice, a dish she makes all the time for her family — including her 4-year-old son.
There are so many nights I stare into my fridge, trying to find the perfect balance between something exciting and something quick. For me, it often comes down, again and again, to miso paste and lemon: two little ingredients that pack as much punch as another 20 combined. If you aren’t familiar with miso paste, it is a form of fermented soybeans that somehow delivers an incredible amount of umami flavor in a tiny spoonful.
So when I need a quick weeknight sauce for almost anything, the answer is usually the bright zest of a lemon combined with the earthy flavor bomb of umami. From salad dressings to soups, it can be your secret weapon.
But the easiest full meal that I keep going back to is this sheet pan miso-lemon salmon with zucchini and rice. It’s an entire meal that goes in the oven for less than 10 minutes and comes out ready to turn up the brightness on your day.
This recipe also includes my other favorite quick-cooking savior: the broiler. Broiling the salmon gives it the foolproof dichotomy of browned exterior with juicy interior. And the zucchini and rice take to the broiler perfectly, adding a bit of crisp to otherwise standard fare. It just so happens to also be among the fastest ways to cook something.
So make your life easier and get on board the miso-lemon train. I promise you’ll never get off.
